How to sleep for five seconds in a batch file/cmd

batch-file timeout
nonopolarity picture nonopolarity · Nov 4, 2009 · Viewed 1.9M times · Source

Windows's Snipping tool can capture the screen, but sometimes I want to capture the screen after five seconds, such as taking an image being displayed by the webcam. (Run the script and smile at the camera, for example.)

How do I sleep for 5 seconds in a batch file?

Answer

asveikau picture asveikau · Nov 4, 2009

I'm very surprised no one has mentioned:

C:\> timeout 5

N.B. Please note however (thanks Dan!) that timeout 5 means:

Sleep anywhere between 4 and 5 seconds

This can be verified empirically by putting the following into a batch file, running it repeatedly and calculating the time differences between the first and second echos:

@echo off
echo %time%
timeout 5 > NUL
echo %time%

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